Potty "retraining"

Katherine has had a little regression in the potty training area. She was never 100% accident free but pretty close. Since Caroline arrived she has been having many more accidents. I think it is partially due to my divided attention so I forget to remind her to go. I think she is also at an age where she does not want to stop what she is doing and take a break. It has been very frustrating for me and I desperately am wanting to have her retrained soon.

At the beginning of this week I decided to use TV watching as a motivator. If she stayed dry all morning we would watch one show before nap and if she stayed dry all afternoon she would get to watch another one before dinner. I think that the concept of delayed gratification was a little difficult for her. Every time she was dry she wanted to watch TV and she got so upset when i would not let her. She had accidents 3 of the 4 time periods we tried this even though she had more successes during that time frame so I decided I needed to switch things up. It was a little too "all or nothing" for her and she was not seeing any rewards for her successes. It was also punishing me as I was not able to have any down time during the times she usually watches some TV.
Yesterday we started our new incentive program. I have a nifty dry erase board with a grid on it. Every time she successfully is dry and goes to the potty she gets to fill in a square. Every time she has an accident I erase a square. When she fills up a column she gets to choose an item from the basket of new toys and books.
Yesterday she only had one accident but she was still able to earn a prize. She chose watercolors. I think she has used them at school but we had never used any at home. She had fun and ended up with a pretty wet piece of paper with a little color. She also decided to see if it worked with finger painting.
Today she decided to get a foam puzzle. I was much more impressed with this puzzle after we played with it than when I bought it. each puzzle piece has a square piece with a shape. The set has three triangles, circles, squares and parallelograms. One is divided in thirds, one divided in halves and the other is whole. So, what Katherine thinks is a fun colorful puzzle is actually teacher her about fractions.
Both the puzzle and watercolors are from Target's dollar spot. Currently there are a lot of art and educational things located there with Back to School.

Hopefully this new reward system will motivate Katherine to retrain herself. So far it is working. When she fills up the entire chart she will get her grand prize of a new Hermie DVD that I got on clearance.

Toddler Pot Luck

Katherine has been going to a summer Mothers Day Out program at the school where she will attend in the fall. To finish off the summer there was a pot luck. It was pretty funny to sign up for juice boxes, graham crackers, apple sauce or macaroni. It was so fun to go eat with her and see her sitting at the table with her friends. She was pretty proud to show me everything.

Claustrophobia

I am sure most moms, especially nursing moms, can identify with me. I often feel down right claustrophobic during the day. I sometimes just want to scream, "give me my space!" It seems like there are days that I am holding Caroline at least 12 hours between nursing and comforting.
Then there are the times that I am cuddling with Katherine either reading or getting her down for bed. what really gets me though is when they are both right on top of me. It is amazing how often it happens. I am sure that a lot of it is Katherine being jealous or wanting to join in on the fun when mommy is holding or nursing Caroline. There are times that I feel like one of them is going to be dropped if I am not careful.
In the pictures above I had just finished nursing Caroline and Katherine decided she needed to be between me and the couch. It was not comfortable but I could not reach around to move her without making Caroline mad. Then she decided to start playing with my hair. That got annoying. I literally felt claustrophobic.
Katherine also loves to climb into my lap when I am holding Caroline at the table. That chair does not fit all three of us well so Katherine usually sits on the arm of the chair.

The big green thing

Katherine is enjoying playing with another item that I enjoyed playing with as a child. The "big green thing" was at my grandparents house. It is an olive green, vinyl thing that you lay on and lean back on to watch TV. My brother and I used to fight over it. We would "call it" when we got to their house kind of like you call "shotgun." I was the lucky one that ended up with it and it is great for toddlers. You can't damage it and it can be used for so much more than watching TV.

Watching TV

Making a hiding place

Making a fort.

Muffin tin meals

I read about the idea of Muffin Tin Monday on Chrys' blog last week. Basically the idea is to get a little creative in the presentation of food at mealtime for your toddler. At first the thought of it totally overwhelmed me. "You mean not only do I have to make a healthy lunch but now I have to creatively present it too?" Well, I decided to give it a try. You know what? It is no more work to put her food in a muffin tin as it was to put it on a plate. It actually helped me to make sure I was giving her more variety as there are 6 compartments.
Katherine thought it was pretty fun to eat out of the muffin tin. I can's say she ate more than usual but I told her that she needed to eat something out of each hole. She did.
She then remembered that the one cabinet that we did not baby proof and she is allowed in is the cabinet with the other muffin tins (actually silicone). So, she went and got another one and practiced her pincher grasp (long ago mastered) by moving every bit of food from one tin to the other.

What not to wear - toddler version

We don't have cable so I never actually get to see "What Not to Wear unless I am at my mom or brother's house. I would imagine though that if they had a toddler version, Katherine would have made the show today.

Of course when I dressed her she matched. She had on a tank top that was hot pink with light pink flowers with light pink shorts.
At some point this morning she traded the shorts for pants all by herself. The problem was hat those pants had a very busy floral pattern. They did have both colors of pink though so she needs to get some credit. She was so proud for getting dressed "all my byself". Later in the day she decided that she wanted to wear her rain suit and rain boots. She insisted that she would go for a walk and be able to splash in the puddles and stay dry in the rain. Hmmm, there was no rain at all today.So, she got all dressed in her rain gear and we went outside for a walk. There was no splashing but she sure looked cute. It was pretty warm and humid so when she returned from the walk she was pretty sweaty.

7 hour sleep!

Caroline sleeps in some really long stretches. Saturday night she fell asleep at 11:45 and did not wake up until 6:45. That meant that we all got 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep - paradise for parents of a newborn. Sunday she took a 5.5 hour nap from 12:30-6. That makes me wonder if she is living on a shorter day than we are. I was scared that the long nap would mean no sleep at night but she did fine. It was harder to get her down but once she was asleep she stayed that way for 5-6 hours.
This is so different from Katherine. Because she was small we had to wake her up every three hours for about a month. Then she got in that habit and it was awhile before I had 5 hour stretches. Katherine continued to wake up once a night several time a week until I weaned her at 22 months so this is a breeze.Caroline may sleep well and not eat at night but most of my day seems to be spend nursing. We have zero schedule or routine at this point and I pretty much nurse on demand. Sometimes that means every 30 minutes and sometimes that means every 4 hours. That is OK, I will take it if it means I get to sleep at night!

30 months

Katherine, this month you have had a huge adjustment in your life by adding a baby sister. You have done a great job with Caroline overall. You love her to death and always want to be with her and help out. Sometimes your helping is not exactly how mommy would like for you to help, but your intentions are right. You always want to hold her and it is so sweet. You are interested in anything having to do with babies. A very commonly heard phrase around our house is, "when I's a baby did I . . ." You have asked if you used a paci, bottle, the swing, bouncy seat, crib, and drank mommy's milk." You seem to think it is pretty neat that Caroline is using your stuff and that you used to do the same things when you were a baby.

You are very observant and imitate what you see. The other day when it was time to use the potty you wanted to stand up. I explained that you sit on the potty. You told me that you wanted to do it the way Caleb does it. Another day you said you wanted medicine for a booboo. Before I had a chance to do anything you were standing on the lid of the toilet trying to get into the cabinet above. When I told you not to stand on the toilet you said "mommy, you do it." I really have to be careful because you will imitate everything I do.
You are continuing to learn so much. We are on a short break from school right now. You really enjoyed being in a class with older kids. This summer you learned a lot of your letters and numbers. You also picked up a few negative things from the older kids. I was shocked one day when you called me a "poopoo head". We had a discussion on how this was not an acceptable thing to say.

It is fun when you do something that I realize you picked up at school. Lately you have been asking me to close my eyes and count to three. A few days later you added "ready or not, here I come". You are pretty funny when you play hide and seek though. You don't hide very well and you call out to the person looking for you.
You are doing some funny things with your numbers. You are now saying 1,2,3,4,5,6,...11. You skip 7-10. I think it is because 7 and 11 rhyme. You also have created the number eleventeen.

You play a game every day of "what's your favorite". Every day you ask us what our favorite animal is and what our favorite castle is. For some reason you are a little confused on what a castle is. I think that you think it is any building. You especially like the "castles" of downtown. Your favorite is the one with the green stripes on it.

You have started to lie to your daddy and me. This is mainly when you want to do something and I tell you know. You will say, "my daddy told me to." So, you are two and a half and already trying to play your parents against one another. Luckily we catch on and you have not gotten anything by us yet. I have tried to explain that it is wrong to do this but explaining the definition of "lie" is very abstract and you are having difficulty in grasping it.

I can't believe it but I have also seen you roll your eyes at me. Now I see why my mom found it so annoying. I hate to admit but I bet you learned it from me.
You are getting much better at eating though you can still be pretty picky. In this picture you were eating dinner at Nana's house and you decided to dip your peanut butter and jelly sandwich in yogurt and then use that so that your macaroni would stick. Sounds pretty gross to me but apparently you ate it all. You love to dip things into ranch, ketchup or Chick-Fil-A's honey roasted BBQ. I have seen you dip a banana into ketchup before and insist that you like it.

There are so many fun things that you are doing. Every time you go to Nana's house we spend the next day talking about all the funny and cute things that you do and say. This week you were touching her flower arrangement and she told you not to. Your response was "Sophia touched it." You remembered that 2 weeks ago she touched the same flower arrangement. What you did not remember was that both Nana and Aunt Jaime told her not to.
You are slipping a bit in your potty training. I know it has to do with baby sister but I don't think you are intentional or spiteful when you have your accidents. I think that I am preoccupied and forget to ask you if you need to go and I am not as persistent in making you try. You are just too distracted by all the other fun things you are doing. I am really getting frustrated though. I am so ready for the accidents to stop.

You can sure throw a temper tantrum. Overall I don't think that the 2's are so terrible but you sure have your moments. The worst tantrums seem to be over bed time and going to the bathroom. I know that daddy and I have been a little lax with you in the past two months and we really need to tighten up and be more quick and consistent in your discipline.
I can often tell when you are tired because you will twirl your hair. The funny thing about it is that you will twirl it so tightly that your finger will get stuck. Usually you get it out but one time I actually had to pull the car over to help you get your finger out of your hair.
The other day you told me that you wanted to be a princess when you grew up. The next day you said that you wanted to be a princess or a fire fighter. I think I prefer for you to be a princess. It is not as dangerous. You are doing a great job at memorizing things. This month you have memorized several nursery rhymes or large parts of them. It is pretty cute. You know Humpy Dumpy, Jack and Jill, Jack Sprat, Peter Piper, Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, Little Bo Peep, Hey Diddle Diddle and several other.

You continue to talk about monsters. Your favorite book right now is Jack and the Beanstalk so our new thing is to tell the monsters, "fee, fi, fo, fum, look out monster here I come. Eyes, ears, hands, feet, I smell something good to eat." You say that to the monster and then continue on with the book by saying, "You're always saying that, now go eat your dinner."I love how much you love to read. It is so fun now that you have so many of your books memorized. You will read them to Caroline. When you read to Caroline you even hold it like a teacher does where she can see the pictures. We checked out a wonderful Mary Engelbright Mother Goose book form the library and you cracked me up the other night when you could not turn the page so you licked your finger. I don't know who you learned that from but it was pretty funny. You like to "attend" a lot. You pretend to have your baby doll walk, crawl and dance. You pretend to be different animals. You pretend to cute. I really want to encourage your creativity and imagination.

For some reason you are confused on traffic lights. You absolutely insist that red means go and green means stop. We will have to get it all sorted out before you get your driver's license for sure.
Here are some of the funny things you have said this month:

• "yes, my mommy" - you often say my mommy or my daddy in funny ways.
• "I have an idea"
• "yes, my silly" - you often confuse "my" and "I". You actually meant, "I'm silly".
• "That's Ok" - you say this usually after you spill or have an accident. Hmmm, our definition of OK may be a little different.
• "I can't pet Hooligan right now because both hands are holding my baby"
• Once Hooligan was barking out the front window. I asked you what you thought she was barking at and you said, "maybe a squirrel, maybe a bird, maybe a dog, maybe a neighbor." You would shrug your shoulders up every time you said "maybe".
• "maybe..." - It just cracks me up the way you say this when you are considering something.
• "remember that"
• "I sink so" - meaning "I think so."

My painful confession

Many of my friends have commented on how impressed they are with how easily and how often I have ventured out with two kids. Caroline is now 5 weeks old and I feel that I am no longer intimidated to get out of the house with both of them. Today we left at 9:45 and went to Pump It Up, Chick-Fil-A and then I dropped Katherine off at Nana's so I could go to the book fair at a home school convention. We got home at 4:15.

There is a trade off though and this is where the confession comes in. My house is an absolute wreck. Maybe that is why I get out of the house every day. By the time I get home each day I am exhausted. It is time for nap. I rarely take one, not because I am being a good housekeeper though I do keep the clothes clean (not put away and folded). Instead of a nap I usually waste time on the computer (like right now). It is my down time.

So, here are the shocking photos of the state of my house right now. I think that this weekend I need to do nothing but work on cleaning up around here.
Here is our bedroom. Notice the red shirt I slept in next to Sam's pj pants on the bed. We have not one but two baskets of clean laundry sitting on a box of stuff that needs to be thrown away next to a mirror that was never rehung after our bathroom remodel. You can't tell but my dresser is full of junk and so is Sam's which is out of the photo. Here is our den. There are toys and baby items EVERYWHERE. For some reason we have not asked, nor required Katherine to clean up her stuff for a few days. Now I think it would be a bit overwhelming for her but after nap we will try to tackle a little at a time. You can see the breakfast room table which has 2 diaper bags and 4 cups on it along with a lot of papers. Last, here is our dining room with about a week's worth of mail including several baby gifts on the table. Also on the table are things I bought yesterday when shopping. Somehow the jogging stroller ended up inside as did Katherine's tricycle. Oops, you can't even see the tricycle because the pile of boxes is so high. We also have Sam's shop lights in our dining room from 3 weeks ago when we were going to use them to try to set up a photo shoot for Caroline. They need to go back out into the workshop.

So for those of you who have expressed your amazement, be amazed no more. I assure you I am no supermom. I just like to get out of the house every day, probably because my house is not a great place to be.

Bath time!

Katherine thought it was a lot of fun when she and Caroline took a bath together. As you can see, they were not really together but they took a bath at the same time in the same room. We assured Katherine that she and Caroline would be able to really take a bath together before too long.

Target

People keep commenting on how much I am doing with the girls. Really I am just choosing stuff that is easy. I may get out a lot but typically I am going places where I will have help. I go to friends houses or meet friends at locations where Katherine will be occupied.

I knew that the ultimate challenge would be taking both kids to the grocery store or Target. Yesterday I decided to go for it and I headed to Target. Katherine sat in the back of the basket and Caroline's car seat was in the front. First stop was the dollar spot where I let Katherine choose a treat that we would keep if she cooperated. I actually spent about $15 at the dollar spot because they had a lot of great educational and art supplies for "Back to School". I was crossing stuff off the list and things were going well. Caroline was asleep and Katherine was behaving. Then I smelled it. There was a dirty diaper smell. Katherine confessed, she had gone #2. So, I had to leave all of my merchandise outside the bathroom and take both girls in to take care of it. I don't think she has ever had such a disastrous accident, let alone in public. I used all of my wipes and she had to continue the shopping trip in panties with no pants. Luckily she was wearing her cover and I had another one because later in the trip she did it again. In her defense, I think she had a little bit of a stomach bug. The rest of our outing was fine. Really both girls were very well behaved. We just had bad timing on a sick tummy.

Because of the sick tummy, I put Katherine in one of our few remaining diapers for her nap. I just was not in the mood to handle more disgusting accidents. That was a huge mistake. She has been asking to wear a diaper ever since. Potty training has regressed a bit anyway, I do not want to use diapers and continue in the wrong direction.

1 month

Caroline, today you are one month old. It has been quite a month. It seems like yesterday that I was in the hospital giving birth yet it also seems like we have been a family of four for quite some time.

You have already changed so much. Of course you are growing. I am not sure how much you weigh now but you are filling out your clothes and you no longer can wear your big sister's preemie clothes.

You are sleeping really well and have your days and nights organized correctly. You usually wake up once a night to nurse. Mommy is very excited about this pattern because I am able to sleep too. You sleep pretty well during the day but the nap times are scattered and different every day. Somehow you are able to sleep though a lot of noise which is great since you are often asked to nap when your sister and her friends are being loud.

You are a really good eater. You nurse quickly and efficiently. I have no idea how many times a day you eat since I have never been one for strict schedules. I am excited that it also seems that you will take a bottle. That will be nice to have a bit more freedom.

You are developing physically. You are getting stronger in your head and neck control. Just yesterday you started reaching out and grabbing things a little. Your eye contact is getting better and you turn your head to look towards sounds.
Your big sister absolutely loves you. Every morning she wants to come see you first thing. usually that results in her waking you up. She loves to hold you and sing to you though I am not sure you are a fan of it. I can't wait until you all start interacting even more.

You are luckily pretty flexible and able to be on the go a lot. This month you have been to church three times, community group twice, the mall twice, various restaurants and friends house, museums, and much more. You usually go in and out of your car seat and sling easily.

Caroline, we are so glad you joined our family. We have had a great first month.

Family portraits

We had family portraits taken when Caroline was 2 weeks old. We used the same photographer that many of our friends have used. He only does newborn photos in the first three weeks and he has it down. The pictures are great.

I am posting a few of our favorites and you can see the entire slide show here. Make sure you have your volume on.

I can't believe we actually got a family photo with Hooligan that looks good.A very proud big sister.

We did a feet picture with Katherine that was our blog header on our old blog. I saw this shot on a photographer's website and wanted to do it. Not an easy shot to get and it requires a bit of photoshop.
Every year on Katherine's birthday we take a picture of all of our hands. I saw the idea in a photography book. It is cool to see the progression.